Cheeky Mungers

In the eyes of everyone who knew them Nigel and Nicola Mungur were the ultimate glamour couple. Wearing new clothes, eating meals out, and even going on foreign holidays. But Nick and Nige were living a lie.

The pair, both Lancs-based PCs, funded their luxury lifestyle by passing on accident victims’ details to a dodgy claims firm. It looked like the perfect crime, but, as it turned out, it wasn’t.

Here’s how criminal mastermind Nigel “Iron” Munger worked his cunning racket. First he set up a business called Personal Injury Company to receive payments from the dodgy claims firm in return for RTA victims’ details he’d filched from his day job with the Lancashire Rozzers.

Then he took pictures on his mobile phone of the details of people who’d been involved in road traffic accidents. Next he uploaded these snaps to DropBox or somewhere, and then some other bloke called John Helton (who was some kind of freelance lead generator for a dodgy claims firm) downloaded them and passed them on to the dodgy claims firm, who contacted the RTA victims to see if they wanted to make some money by pretending to have a sore neck or something.

It was all going swimmingly. Busy Nige netted no less than £363,000 from the sale of RTA details he’d swiped on no fewer than 21,802 occasions. But then calamity struck when Lancs Police noticed a lot of people were complaining about getting unsolicited calls from dodgy claims people when they hadn’t shared their details with anyone other than a police officer. One complainant even got a call before the police turned up.

Even after all the complaints alerted his employers to the being-upness of something, PC Munger might still have gotten away with it, if it hadn’t been for one tiny flaw in his plan: the fact that his mobile phone records provided a comprehensive account of his wrongdoing, complete with texts exchanged with Helton and with Mrs Munger to whom Nige bragged about future income and moaned about doing all the dirty work.

Now, for this notably naughty couple, payback time has come at last. Disgrace to the force that he is, Nige Mung has been sent down for five years at Her Majesty’s pleasure, while Nick Mung got just a 12 month suspended sentence, on the basis that she’s a lady (of sorts) and Nige did all the dirty work.